I was having a conversation with a tech official at our driver's school Sunday and the topic of rules came up and whether a certain car was in violation of the rules.

The car in question (1st gen RX7) had his headlights removed and the headlight covers sealed off with metal. The official I was talking to stated that he didn't feel that this gave the car a performance advantage therefore he considered it to be legal.

I then questioned him on the legality of removing the glass window and mechanicals of the window in the driver's door(of a car without Nascar bars)and was again told he was OK with that and wouldn't allow a protest of that either.

To which I questioned him to show me in the GCR where this was legal to do. After looking in the GCR and were unable to find the passage that allowed this (headlights) I asked him, "when did he become the offical in charge of deciding what was or wasn't legal".

It seems to me that this "tech" official (and possibly others) was instead of following the rulebook, was interjecting his own opinion as to what was written.

If we have rules written and one of the rules is, "if it doesn't say you can do it, you can't do it", then why do we have officials going beyond the rulebook and deciding cases outside their realm of authority?

Maybe I missed just the memo in Fasttrak?

Mike